


The Conquest of Spaces

by roseisreturning



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Doctor Who, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseisreturning/pseuds/roseisreturning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosima Niehaus just wants to pay for school without selling her soul. This is complicated slightly by the explosion of her job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Conquest of Spaces

You try your best to follow protocol when you see her down the hall. "Hey, uh, can I help you? You’re really not supposed to be down here…"

"No. I… Who are you looking for?"

"Um, just my boss? I gotta see him about my—"

She doesn’t hesitate. She just says, "He’s dead."

"What? Holy shit, do I have to call someone? I’m just a student, man, I can’t—holy shit—"

Her voice is soft but insistent. "No,” she says, “you have to go. It’s—there’s nothing you can do, just—follow me."

"Dude, no, what are you doing?"

"I’m saving you! Come on!"

She grabs your hand and runs down the hall, dragging you into the elevator before it’s even had the chance to open all the way. The doors are just sliding closed when a hand reaches in.

"Fuck!" It’s then that you pull what is probably one of the douchiest moves of your life, but you’re pretty sure you don’t want that asshole in with you, so, like, what can you do, right? You hold down the  _close door_  button with what’s probably more force than necessary. You realize you’re not gonna sever the hand or anything, but, like, come on. They’ve gotta get the message sooner or later.

The woman smirks at you and fishes something out of her pocket at the same time you decide the arm is almost definitely plastic.

You almost scream. "Shit,” you say, “is that a gun?"

"No, um… No guns. Just a… screwdriver. A sonic screwdriver. It’s very, um—" she touches the thing (which you realize now is distinctly un-gunlike) to the mannequin’s arm. The weirdly  _thunderous_  whirring that comes immediately after makes you more than a little anxious, but whatever it is that she’s done… it works.

You think. The woman is smiling, at least. But she also has a plastic arm in her hand. Somehow, those things don’t really add up for you.

When the elevator reaches the ground floor, she doesn’t get out.

You really want to be nice about it. "Hey,” you tell her, “uh, you know you’re not really supposed to stick around, right?"

"Right! Not sticking around, that’s something you should do."

"Come on. I wanna keep this job. I gotta pay for school, okay?"

"You really have to leave."

"Why can’t you come with me?"

"You could die!"

"This is fucked up. Fine, man. I’m leaving. I’m trusting you, okay?"

She nods. You walk out a little faster than usual.

+

You’re already late when she knocks your shit to the ground. It’s not on purpose or anything, but, like, she was flat-out sprinting. Come on.

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry!” she says. Her eyes dart from the horizon to your notebooks, like she isn’t sure whether or not she should help.

“Dude,” you say, cringing at the slush-soaked notes you just know you’ll have to redo, “where are you going?”

“Um…” She’s still looking at the notes uncertainly, and a hand has made its way to her actually really nice hair. You take pity on her.

“Hey,” you tell her, “if you’re in that much of a rush—”

“Um, no. No…” She laughs. “I have a few more chances.”

“Uh, okay? I… had to go to class, but it’s still, like, a couple light years away, so I’ll probably just… whatever. Um, I’m Cosima.”

She nods, and you kind of clear your throat to let her know that yeah, you kind of are expecting her name.

“Right! I’m… the Doctor.”

“Sorry, sorry, so you’re not a student?”

“No.”

“Wait, like—? Whatever. Uh, what was your name?”

“The Doctor.”

“Okay, uh, sure. The Doctor.”

She nods.

“Great,” you say, wanting to fill the space. “So, uh, I totally blew off class just now.”

“I can take you back, if you want?”

“It started, like, forever ago. Overslept. Bumped into you. Talked to you. Talking to—holy shit. You’re her.”

"Yes."

"What the fuck was that?"

“Come on!” She grabs your hand and pulls you toward her, then whispers, “On three?”

“Seriously?” you say.

"I have a time machine."

"Dude—"

The Doctor’s running again before you even have a chance to stop her. It’s nothing short of miraculous that neither of you slip before she stops you at a corner. And spoiler: There’s nothing there.

“Impressive,” you say, mostly to distract from the fact that you are in fact not only a dork with glasses but also a dork with asthma.

To her credit, the Doctor rolls with it. “No, no, no, no, no. The time machine is…” She turns the corner and motions for you to follow. “Here!” She leans back on it—an oversized blue telephone booth—and looks over to you for some kind of reaction. “Well…?”

“It’s not a time machine,” you say. “It’s cute. But it’s not a time machine. I don’t buy it, man.”

The Doctor opens the doors. You’re not looking at the inside of a telephone booth. A whole room is spread out beyond the space it should be, with rafters and controls and walls too round for any kind of box.

“Holy shit,” you say. “What did you do? I’ve been over there, there’s no way this is—okay, man, I give up. Not my place in geekdom. What’s the deal?”

“Separate dimension. Not so much separate, but… different…? It’s oversimplified…”

“Okay,” you say, more confused than ever, “cool, yeah… I’ll, uh, google it. Uh, right, okay, so does this thing seriously time travel?”

“Mhm.”

Your mind has always been fast, but it’s never been scattered. Right now, it’s nothing but. You’re thinking a million thoughts a second, and can’t string any of them together. “Close the doors, wait, do you—oh my god, start it!”

The Doctor is laughing. “Okay, okay, hold on!”

The room is filled with echoes of sounds you haven’t heard and golden light and too much of everything. When it settles, the Doctor looks to you.

“Well?” she asks.

“Mm, I get the honors?”

The Doctor nods. You swing open the doors. “This is the Mall of America,” you tell her.

“What?”

“Look outside, man. Some fucking time machine.”

“Well—” she says.

“I could seriously just drive here, oh my—god. Uh, Doctor? Check this out, okay?”

She leans out the door. You want to look over and get some idea about how _she_ feels, but you can’t bring yourself to look away. There are maybe twenty mannequins making their way out the glass door of an Aéropostale in a militant march.

“What the fuck, Doctor?”

“This is… what I was looking for.”

“You were looking for this? Dude—you know what, whatever. Just, take care of this, okay?”

The Doctor goes back through the doorway, circling the console with a glee that you wish you didn’t share. First, she holds up a plastic head. “Tracking!” she calls over to you.

Okay. That’s cool. She’s said weirder shit than that…

Then, she pulls out a vial of something vividly blue. “Antiplastic!” she says, shaking it in a way that it probably shouldn’t be shaken.

“ _Antiplastic_? Like—”

“Not so much in the sense you know… um, it’s meant to fight the…?” She backtracks. “The mannequins are called Autons. They want to harvest your planet. It’s innovative, at least. But not ideal. So, we’re using this to combat it. It’s more of a scare tactic than anything, but…”

“Desperate times.”

She nods. “Desperate times.”

“So,” you say, “we don’t have enough of that shit to spritz on every mannequin in here, and it’s definitely not an isolated thing… so it’s coming from somewhere, yeah? A headquarters or something. No, um, probably not the best term, right? You said it was a… like, one entity through multiple bodies? Totally not freaked out. Totally cool. But where is it set up?”

“Not freaked out?” the Doctor asks.

“No way. We gotta solve this, okay? I’m grilling you later.”

She smiles, and you know you have to hold her to it. “Okay.”

“So seriously, what are we looking for, like, it’s not a literal headquarters if it’s singular—“

“It’s a transmitter. A very powerful one.”

“Tell me about it. Shit, so that’s gonna be—“

“Circular in shape, very, very large.”

“Right. So, it would be pretty fucked up for it to be—“ You really don’t want to finish your sentence. You do it anyway—“the, uh, Ferris wheel?”

The doctor’s eyes light up. “Cosima!” You don’t have much time to react before she hugs you.

“Dude—“

“Sorry, I—“

“No, no, it’s cool. Come on,” you say. “Count of three.”

She takes off instantly.

“Asshole!” you shout after her. “Trying to save the fucking world and you break the golden rule of running!”

The Doctor laughs. “Sorry!”

You kind of totally trip yourself up while you’re thinking of a witty reply that doesn’t give away how totally into her you are. The Doctor keeps running.

Bitch.

You catch up to her at the Ferris wheel, at which point you’ve gotten about twenty “watch it”s from your fellow shoppers. Coincidentally, your lungs kind of feel like they’re dying.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey.”

“I know where you’re gonna go here. Controls are downstairs. Last one to the basement--?” You don’t wait for her to answer.

When she reaches you, you’re trying your hardest to charm this employee in your most seductive, asthmatic voice to let you downstairs.

“Come on… Scott. There’s gotta be some way—hi—“

“Delphine,” she supplies immediately. “This is my, um…” The Doctor looks back at you.

“Girlfriend.” _Smooth, Niehaus._

“Yes, um, we’re just... heading over…”

“Totally ridiculous. We’re just… gonna leave.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor says.

You walk off together, trying not to laugh.

When you’ve successfully a) located the elevator and b) escaped Scott, the Doctor nudges you. “Girlfriend?”

“Why not, _Delphine_?” You try to make this sound cool and intimidating. You mostly sound like a seventh-grader.

The doors glide open. The Doctor doesn’t answer.

Instead, she takes out that goddamn screwdriver and starts messing with the controls.

Ten minutes of buzzing later, you can’t help yourself. “You know I could look up the wikiHow.”

The elevator starts moving the next second. The Doctor beams.

“You totally fucking planned that.”

The Doctor shrugs.

“I’m not saying you’re an asshole or anything, but you kind of are.”

The doors open again.

You’re pretty sure this is not how the Mall of America basement is supposed to look.

You know immediately where the Ferris wheel is. Through the overwhelming red light, you see a vat glowing a sort of yellowy orange. You can’t make it out beyond the fact that it is definitely moving, and probably alive.

Neither of these facts give you much hope.

“So…”

The Doctor walks up the vat. “You need to retreat,” she says.

You wish you could say that the voice was so different from the one you knew it was unrecognizable. It is not. Her voice remains hers.

The thing in the vat makes some horrible, hissing noise. Somehow, you take this as your cue to move closer to the Doctor. Logically, this is probably not the best move, but you don’t back away.

The Doctor bites her lip, then grabs your hand. You feel the vial before her own skin. “I don’t want to use it,” she says, “but I have antiplastic. If you resist—“

Immediately, mannequins come upon you.

You kind of want to laugh at them, since it’s kind of momjeans city over here, but, like, that would be bad. That would be really bad.

Instead, you take the vial from the Doctor’s hand before they seize her.

After all, an asthmatic PhD student isn’t exactly a threat to an alien species.

Unless that PhD student happens to have a killer throw.

(She does. You do.)

It’s probably not the smartest solution by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a definite solution.

When the vial hits the creature, it lets out a final awful sound, then goes silent. The mannequins drop the Doctor and collapse.

“Fuck,” you say.

The Doctor runs over to you, laughing. “You did it,” she whispers.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s get outta here, okay?”

She nods, and the next moment, your hand is again in hers.

+

The wreckage is awful. When you finally reach the telephone booth, you just want to lie down.

The Doctor closes the doors.

“Hey,” you say, “this isn’t supposed to be, like, a come-on or whatever, but could we go back to my apartment? There's some shit I really need."


End file.
